Spain: A
land of asylum?by Delia BlancoThe
commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the proclamation of
our Constitution which, in its article 13.4, recognises the right
to asylum as one of the fundamental rights, comes in between
the anniversaries of two concurring events that are particularly
relevant. On the one hand, the 22 July 1978 was also the quarter-century
anniversary of Spain's adhesion to the two main international
legal instruments for the protection of refugees the 1951 Geneva
Convention and the 1967 New York Protocol. Just when it recovered
democracy Spanish society, which knew very well about the tragic
meaning of exile, expressed its will to commit itself in the
defence of people who had to flee their countries because their
human rights were under threat.

Only six months after the Carta Magna [the Constitution was
approved on 7 May 1979], representatives of the political parties,
of trade union organisations, of religious faiths, and of non
governmental organisations and organisations for the defence
of human rights founded the Comisión Española de
Ayuda al Refugiado (CEAR), as an expression of the constitutional
mandate to convert Spain into a land of asylum.

However, the celebration of the first twenty-five years of
our Carta Magna also coincides with one of the most difficult
moments in the government's asylum policy, which violates the
provisions in the Constitution, the 1984 Asylum Law and the Geneva
Convention on an almost daily basis. Instead of taking in the
people who arrive in our country because they require international
protection, the government consciously acts against the right
to asylum, within the framework of a European Union that is obsessed
with sealing its borders and removing refugees to detention centres
in third countries.

The most dramatic example is Ceuta, where over 300 persons
have applied for refugee status (and hundreds of refugees) are
forced to live in poverty in the streets due to the saturation
of the Centro de Estancia Temporal para Inmigrantes (CETI, temporary
holding centre for immigrants). This is after the government
representative had a camp that was set up by Médicos sin
Fronteras (MSF) to provide the assistance that the authorities
were denying them were evicted by force. Furthermore, alongside
recent allegations of police brutality against refugees who sleep
on the beaches, CEAR's yearly report, La situación de
los refugiados en España, documents how members of the
Policía Nacional (National Police) forced several asylum
applicants to abandon Spanish territory by crawling under the
barbed-wire fence of the border perimeter, in an absolutely irregular
and inhumane manner.

The humanitarian crisis in Ceuta has reached such a serious
condition that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human
Rights (UNHCR) has recently demanded that the government accord
a dignified treatment to refugees, and that it speed up the procedures
concerning asylum applications, which currently involve a four-month
wait on average.

On the other hand, the obstacles to reaching Spanish territory
(for example, the imposition of a visa requirement) are ever-increasing,
due to the restrictions that the Executive has imposed in its
three reforms of the Ley de Extranjería (Aliens' Law,
the Spanish law on immigration) during its term in office, something
unheard of for an organic law, which requires an extensive social
and political agreement. The impediments that it envisages to
prevent thousands of refugees from applying for asylum in Spain
mean that these persons may continue to be exposed to suffering
human rights violations.

This is the case for the citizens of Colombia, a country that
has been bled white by an undeclared civil war during the last
four decades. According to Interior Ministry figures, 2,532 Colombian
citizens applied for asylum in 2001, a figure which, due to the
visa requirement decreed by the government in January 2002, fell
to 1,065 last year and to 410 in the first ten months of 2003
. Moreover, according to its own provisional figures, the Interior
Ministry has decided between January and October to admit to
proceedings 501 asylum applications filed by Colombian citizens,
of which it has only allowed 334. At the same time, the European
Union is approving one declaration after another condemning the
terrible situation of violence that the country is suffering,
and the human rights violations.

Another example of the government policy is the latest reform
of the Ley de Extranjería, which forces obligations upon
transport companies to check the documentation of passengers
in their country of origin. Faced with the heavy sanctions that
they may suffer, it seems obvious that these companies will refuse
to transport any person lacking the necessary documentation to
Spain, and this is a situation in which many refugees tend to
find themselves, as they cannot wait four months to be granted
a visa, for example, when they have to flee desperately to save
their lives. In other instances, the transport companies reach
the point of exerting direct pressure on passengers in Spanish
airports to prevent them from applying for asylum.

These measures already lead to the collapse of the asylum
system, because they leave decisions for which the Government
and the UNHCR are responsible in the hands of an employee of
any of the transport companies, and they deprive refugees of
the legal guarantees that they are granted under the Asylum Law.

In the European Union, the winds that are blowing are not
favourable for the victims of human rights violations seeking
protection within its borders, either. Thus, UNHCR warned the
six-month Italian Presidency of the EU that the legislative proposals
discussed in the recent Justice and Home Affairs Council of Ministers
meeting contravene the European Convention on Human Rights, as
well as the obligation that Internation Law imposes on its different
Member States. With the excuse of the harmonisation process of
community asylum policies required under the Amsterdam Treaty,
the European governments are in reality looking to limit the
level of protection offered to refugees, and to close their borders,
through measures that contravene the Geneva Convention, such
as the drawing up of a list of supposed "safe countries"
to automatically deny their citizens asylum.

Twenty-five years have already passed since the constitution
declared Spain a land of asylum, but today applying for refugee
status in our country has become a narrow path that is plagued
by incertitude, obstacles and impediments (for example, through
the use of subsidiary protection statuses, which are of less
value than [refugee status, and can be revoked, thus leaving
the asylum applicant without documents and under the threat of
expulsion). And after this bureaucratic ordeal, the Government
denies the recognition of their condition of refugees to 95%
of the people who applied for it, and who find themselves condemned
to social exclusion and an expulsion which, according to agreements
adopted within the EU, can be carried out with the use of force.

Today, Spain is, and it is deeply painful for us to say this,
a land that is hostile to refugees as a result of the government's
policy. It is not the welcoming place that the Spanish people
voted in favour of in the Constitutional referendum in 1978,
or the place that the figures and organisations that founded
CEAR dreamt of in the heat of this sentiment in May 1979. The
democratic Spain of 2003 has forgotten about the bloodied Spain
of 1939, which saw how hundreds of thousands of its children
had to flee the Franco regime's terror and were spread around
the different corners of the planet.

However, for as long as refugees continue to knock on the
doors of our fortress, we will continue to work for all of the
draw-bridges to be lowered. We will always see our own reflection
in them because they are a metaphor of humanity, their fate has
to do with each and every one of us.

Delia Blanco is the president of the Comisión
Española de Ayuda al Refugiado (CEAR)
This article first appeared in El País newspaper on 2
January 2004.

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